LET'S GET COOKING!

Well it's Monday morning and it's pouring with rain and I am supposed to be doing housework as I have a day off (for this read 'I am planning to carry the laundry upstairs and then get the Hoover out and inevitably suck up about 400 Lego men's head)....therefore I am blogging.

It occurred to me earlier that we haven't talked about cake for a while. The Great British Bake Off is back on BBC2 and currently provides me with my highlight of the working week when it comes to evening entertainment.  I'm saying nothing about the fact I get over-excited about whether or not someones creme brulee resembles a pool of snot other than 'oh my god I'm turning into my Mother'.

Some of you long time followers may recall my adventures in baking Iggle Piggle - which bizarrely ended up on the first page of Google if you searched for 'how to make an Iggle Piggle cake even though it emphatically told you how NOT to make one.  Go figure.  If you need to explore this adventure in food dye, icing that resembled a placenta and Lambrini it's here: http://slightlysouthofsanity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/how-not-to-make-iggle-piggle-birthday.html

Anyway several birthday's have passed since then and thus several cakes.

Last year I made the younger child a cat cake - this became known as the Psychotic Pussy.  I don't have a picture (I can't think why) but I seem to remember him crying when he saw it and people looking awkward.  The cat looked angry.  VERY angry.  And it was covered in silver balls and jelly tots.  My ex was still living in the house at this point and I think the cake, in retrospect, may have kind of channelled my inner feelings. And no doubt I decorated it after drinking 4 cans of Stella.  This was the same birthday that I realised late the night before I had no wrapping paper and had to wrap his presents in wallpaper samples.  First and last jigsaw puzzle he'll ever get wrapped in Laura Ashley's 'Kimono Duck Egg'.

This year his dad made him a Russian tank.  It was far less alarming.

For the older child last year I had the idea of baking a volcano. As you do.  If you want to make a volcano cake here are your instructions:

1. Get a jug (kind of dome shaped) and cook a sponge cake in it.  By a jug I mean a Pyrex type one.  If you use a plastic one you will end up with a smell akin to the one I once experienced when a friend's younger brother put a Lego mat under the lit grill pan......

2. When the cake is cooked take it out the oven (always helps) and cut out a cone from the middle. This is to make the bit the lava rises up through and spills out of.  The 'vent'.

You will note from this photo that the part removed from the cake has an unfortunate resemblance to a sponge penis.  But this is the shape you are looking for.  You can do as you wish with it - it isn't needed for a grander plan.  I ate it.

3.  Decorate the cake so it resembles a huge pile of dog vomit after a dog ate some ball bearings and mustard and bled internally an erupting volcano (and yes that IS icing, it is NOT ketchup and mustard).

4. Realise that unless you do something bloody quick nobody is going to have a clue what the bloody thing is other than a tragedy in carbohydrate form

5. Stick a plastic Jurassic looking tree and a surprisingly camp dinosaur (tragically out of scale) on it and VOILA - A VOLCANO CAKE!! Or dinosaur standing over a fresh kill...

This year, not to wanting to turn away from a seemingly winning formula, I cooked another cake in a jug and made this......

What do you mean you don't know what it is!?!

It's a tornado.

Obviously.

There were originally more chocolate fingers 'whirling' round it to symbolise the winds but some, erm, went missing.  Down my throat.

By the time I served it there was 4 left.

The only warning I'll give you on this recipe is that if you stick small things in the cake to resemble storm damage be careful of accidentally swallowing something like a Playmobil guinea pig.  Nobody wants that coming out in their poo.  Least of all Mary Berry.

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